The Diary of Merer (c. 2566 BC) is the oldest known papyrus manuscript. There is an older roll of papyrus but it is blank. And there is older Egyptian writing on stone and ivory. It is more a logbook or timesheet than what we think of as a diary. Government officials like Merer were expected to account for the time they spent working for the king.
It was written in Old Egyptian in hieratic, a simplified, cursive form of hieroglyphics. It was probably written by Merer himself: very few people knew how to read and write, but as a government official he would be one of them.
Excerpt:
[Day 25]: [Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle [h]au[ling]? st[ones in Tura South]; spends the night at Tura South
[Day 26]: Inspector Merer casts off with his phyle from Tura [South], loaded with stone, for Akhet-Khufu [at Giza]; spends the night at She-Khufu.
Day 27: sets sail from She-Khufu, sails towards Akhet-Khufu, loaded with stone, spends the night at Akhet-Khufu.
Day 28: casts off from Akhet-Khufu in the morning; sails upriver <towards> Tura South.
Day 29: Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle hauling stones in Tura South; spends the night at Tura South.
Day 30: Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle hauling stones in Tura South; spends the night at Tura South.
It goes on and on like that for about two and a half months, probably August to October -2566. Not terribly exciting stuff – except that this is not only the oldest known papyrus manuscript, but it is also the only surviving account we have of the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza that was written at the time.
It was written when the Nile was flooded and it was easiest to move stone from the quarry at Tura to Akhet-Khufu, the Horizon of Khufu, presumably the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built by King Khufu (Cheops). Both the quarry and the pyramid would be near the water’s edge at that time. Tura was 13 to 17 km from Giza. The stone in this case would have been the white limestone that covered the pyramid for over 3,000 years. Later it would be stripped off to build the city of Cairo nearby.
The pyramid would have looked something like this shortly after the diary was written:
Merer led a team (phyle) of 200 men who transported stone from Tura and later copper from Sinai.
According to his records, his men were well-fed, being well supplied with beef, poultry, fish and beer. That is probably accurate: the cattle-to-pig ratio at a worker village near Giza was high. People raised pigs for themselves, cattle for the king, who used beef to feed his workers.
The diary says nothing about transporting copper. That comes from where it was found: at a boat storage facility from the -2500s at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast near Sinai. Egypt got copper and turquoise from Sinai. It was part of the pyramid-building operation: copper was needed to cut pyramid stones. Copper mixed with arsenic was the hardest metal at the time. Bronze (copper + tin) was not yet common in Egypt.
– Abagond, +2023.
See also:
- century readings – this is my reading for the -2500s
- Egypt: a brief history
- papyrus
- Egyptian language
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Abagond 
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